A congestion control mechanism known as “APN based congestion control” is known. This mechanism is used to restrict a terminal's (e.g., a wireless communication device's) access to a network based (e.g., the Internet or other network) based on an APN that the terminal seeks to utilize for connectivity to the network. An APN may be the name of an access point (e.g., gateway) between a mobile network (e.g., an Long Term Evolution (LTE) core network) and another network (e.g., the Internet). As a specific example, in a GPRS backbone, an APN is a reference to a Gateway GPRS support node (GGSN). In some implementations, an APN is composed of a network identifier and an operator identifier.
Consider a terminal that seeks to access a network using an APN having a value of “network-id.operator-id”. In such a scenario, a management entity (ME) of a core network (e.g., a Mobile Management Entity (MME) or (SGSN)) may receive from the terminal a request for connectivity (e.g., a request to establish a context or a connection), which request may include the APN (or the APN may be defined as a default APN in a subscription record for the terminal). Based on information regarding the APN, the management entity may deny the terminal's connectivity request. For instance, the ME may deny the request based on: whether the number of active Evolved Packet System (EPS) bearers for APN exceeds a threshold; whether the rate of EPS Bearer activations for APN exceeds a threshold; whether one or more Packet Data Network (PDN) gateways (GWs) of the APN are not reachable or indicated congestion to the ME; the rate of MM signaling requests associated with the devices with a particular subscribed APN; and/or Setting in network management.